Egypt-Million man march-Protesters flood Egypt streets

[StrontiumDog]

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/mi...827193882.html

Protesters flood Egypt streets

At least a million gather in Cairo's Tahrir Square as mass protests against President Mubarak are staged across country.

Last Modified: 01 Feb 2011 11:44 GMT

About 1,000,000 people have gathered for the planned "march of a million" in the Egyptian capital, calling for Hosni Mubarak, the embattled Egyptian president, to step down.

Meanwhile, one of Egypt's oldest parties, Wafd, announced on Tuesday that a number of opposition groups have agreed to form "a national front" to deal with the volatile situation there. In a statement, Wafd said that president Mubarak "has lost legitimacy".

Also on Tuesday, the Muslim Brotherhood, an officially banned but tolerated movement, said it will not negotiate with president Mubarak or his government.

Earlier, some opposition parties have called for Mubarak to delegate responsibilities to newly appointed vice-president Omar Suleiman, who they are prepared to negotiate with.

Throngs protest

Thousands of demonstrators began gathering from early on Tuesday morning in Cairo's Tahrir Square, which has been the focal point of protests in the capital and served as the meeting area for the march to begin on the eighth day of an uprising that has so far claimed more than 125 lives.

Another protest in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria attracted tens of thousands of protesters, as national train services were cancelled in an apparent bid to stymie protests. Protests were also reported in the city of Suez.

Protest organisers have also called for an indefinite strike to be observed across the country.

Our producer in Egypt reports on the latest developments

Soldiers at Tahrir Square have formed a human chain around protesters, and are checking people as they enter for weapons. Tanks have been positioned near the square, and officers have been checking identity papers.

The army has also blocked all major roads in the city, and tens of thousands of protesters are being held at the Kasr al-Nile bridge. They were on their way to the main protest at Tahrir Square.

'Gaining momentum'

Al Jazeera correspondents have described a "festival-like" and "communal" atmosphere at the protest, with protesters from all walks of life represented.

"It is peaceful, people power that has united here in the heart of Egypt's historic square," reported one correspondent.

An Al Jazeera correspondent in Cairo said that there were reports that "thugs in certain parts of the city have been trying to stop people from driving into Cairo".

She said that "increasingly large pockets of pro-government protests" are also taking place at various locations in the city. There are fears that if the two sets of protesters meet, a violent clash could erupt.

Gigi Ibrahim, a political activist who planned to attend the rally, told Al Jazeera the protesters will not be satisfied until Mubarak steps down.

"I think today there will be great numbers on the street ... every day there are more numbers on the street than the day before. I think the protests are gaining momentum. The people ... will literally not leave until Mubarak steps down," she said.



In an attempt to discourage people from the protests, Egyptian state television has asked people to stay at home, warning of possible violence.

An Al Jazeera online producer in Cairo said that if today's protest does not go as planned, similar protests could be planned for Friday.

Protests are also taking place in the cities of Mansoura, Damnhour, Arish, Tanta and El-Mahalla El-Kubra.

The new protests come as the police have returned to the streets.

But while the police's posture to be adopted in the face of the strike and marches remains unknown, the Egyptian army stated clearly on Monday that it would not stop protests

Faced with the prospect of massive numbers trying to converge on the capital, Egyptian authorities stopped all train traffic with immediate effect on Monday afternoon, and the state-owned national carrier EgyptAir said it was cancelling all international and domestic flights during curfew hours (3.00pm to 8.00am local time).

Army promise

In a statement on Monday, the army said "freedom of expression" was guaranteed to all citizens using peaceful means.

"To the great people of Egypt, your armed forces, acknowledging the legitimate rights of the people," stress that "they have not and will not use force against the Egyptian people," said the statement.

It was the first such explicit confirmation by the army that it would not fire at demonstrators who have taken to the streets of Egypt and comes a day before Tuesday's "march of millions".

Our producer in Egypt reports on the latest developments in Tahrir Square

It urged people not to resort to acts of sabotage that violate security and destroy public and private property. It warned that it would not allow outlaws to loot, attack and "terrorise citizens".

The call for the "million-man-march" from the so-called April 6 movement has come as Mubarak swore in a new cabinet on Monday, in an attempt to defuse ongoing demonstrations across the country.

Panic and chaos

On Tuesday, even as Egypt continued to face economic turmoil as a result of protests, the International Monetary Fund said it was ready to put in a place an economic rebuilding policy for the country.

"The IMF is ready to help in defining the kind of economic policy that could be put in place," IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said.

Meanwhile, chaos has been reported at Cairo's international airport, where thousands of foreigners are attempting to be evacuated by their home countries.

Our correspondent reported on Tuesday that about 1,000 US citizens have been evacuated to Cyprus or Turkey, from where they are expected to make their own way home.

She also said that China is sending two additional planes to evacuate its citizens.

[StrontiumDog]

Hundreds of Thousands Flood Streets of Cairo Calling for Mubarak's Ouster

Published February 01, 2011
Associated Press

AP2011
Feb. 1: Tens of thousands of people flood into the heart of Cairo to demand the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.

CAIRO – More than 200,000 people flooded into the heart of Cairo Tuesday, filling the city's main square as a call for a million protesters was answered by the largest demonstration in a week of unceasing demands for President Hosni Mubarak to leave after nearly 30 years in power.

Protesters streamed into Tahrir, or Liberation, Square, among them people defying a government transportation shutdown to make their way from rural provinces in the Nile Delta. The peaceful crowd was jammed in shoulder to shoulder — schoolteachers, farmers, unemployed university graduates, women in conservative headscarves and women in high heels, men in suits and working-class men in scuffed shoes.

They sang nationalist songs and chanted the anti-Mubarak "Leave! Leave! Leave!" as military helicopters buzzed overhead. Organizers said the aim was to intensify marches to get the president out of power by Friday, and similar demonstrations erupted in at least five other cities around Egypt.

Soldiers at checkpoints set up the entrances of the square did nothing to stop the crowds from entering.

The military promised on state TV Monday night that it would not fire on protesters, a sign that army support for Mubarak may be unraveling as momentum builds for an extraordinary eruption of discontent and demands for democracy in the United States' most important Arab ally.

At least 100 people have been killed during the week-long protests in Egypt as anti-government demonstrators take to the streets, calling for President Mubarak to step down.

"This is the end for him. It's time," said Musab Galal, a 23-year-old unemployed university graduate who came by minibus with his friends from the Nile Delta city of Menoufiya.

Mubarak, 82, would be the second Arab leader pushed from office by a popular uprising in the history of the modern Middle East.

The loosely organized and disparate movement to drive him out is fueled by deep frustration with an autocratic regime blamed for ignoring the needs of the poor and allowing corruption and official abuse to run rampant. After years of tight state control, protesters emboldened by the overthrow of Tunisia's president last month took to the streets on Jan. 25 and mounted a relentless and once unimaginable series of protests across this nation of 80 million people — the region's most populous country and the center of Arabic-language film-making, music and literature.

Mubarak's weakening hold on power has forced the world to plan for the end of a regime that maintained three decades of peace with Israel and relative stability despite a powerful domestic Islamist terrorist threat, even as its human rights record was constantly criticized the gap between rich and poor widened.

Nearly half of Egypt's 80 million people live under or just above the poverty line set by the World Bank at $2 a day.

Troops and Soviet-era and newer U.S.-made Abrams tanks stood at the roads leading into Tahrir Square, a plaza overlooked by the headquarters of the Arab League, the campus of the American University in Cairo, the famed Egyptian Museum and the Mugammma, an enormous winged building housing dozens of departments of the country's notoriously corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy.

The protesters were more organized than on previous days. Volunteers wearing tags reading "the People's Security" circulated through the crowds, saying they were watching for government infiltrators who might try to instigate violence.

"We will throw out anyone who tries to create trouble," one announced over a loudspeaker. Other volunteers joined the soldiers at the checkpoints, searching bags of those entering for weapons. Organizers said the protest would remain in the square and not attempt to march to avoid frictions with the military.

Two dummies representing Mubarak were hung from traffic lights. On their chests was written: "We want to put the murderous president on trial." Their faces were scrawled with the Star of David, an allusion to many protesters' feeling that Mubarak is a friend of Israel, still seen by most Egyptians as their country's archenemy more than 30 years after the two nations signed a peace treaty.

Every protester had their own story of why they came — with a shared theme of frustration with a life pinned in by corruption, low wages, crushed opportunites and abuse by authorities.

Sahar Ahmad, a 41-year-old school teacher and mother of one, said she has taught for 22 years and still only makes about $70 a month.

"There are 120 students in my classroom. That's more than any teacher can handle," said Ahmad. "For me, change would mean a better education system I can teach in and one that guarantees my students a good life after school. If there is democracy in my country, then I can ask for democracy in my own home."

Tamer Adly, a driver of one of the thousands of minibuses that ferry commuters around Cairo, said he was sick of the daily humiliation he felt from police who demand free rides and send him on petty errands, reflecting the widespread public anger at police high-handedness.

"They would force me to share my breakfast with them ... force me to go fetch them a newspaper. This country should not just be about one person," the 30-year-old lamented, referring to Mubarak.

Among the older protesters there was also a sense of amazement after three decades of unquestioned control by Mubarak's security forces over the streets.

"We could never say no to Mubarak when we were young, but our young people today proved that they can say no, and I'm here to support them," said Yusra Mahmoud, a 46-year-old school principal who said she had been sleeping in the square alongside other protesters for the past two nights.

Authorities shut down all roads and public transportation to Cairo, security officials said. Train services nationwide were suspended for a second day and all bus services between cities were halted.

All roads in and out of the flashpoint cities of Alexandria, Suez, Mansoura and Fayoum were also closed.

The officials said thousands of protesters gathered in Alexandria, Suez, the southern province of Assiut, the city of Mansoura north of Cairo, and Luxor, the southern city where some 5,000 people protested outside its iconic Ancient Egyptian temple on the east bank of the Nile.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Normally bustling, Cairo's streets outside Tahrir Square had a fraction of their normal weekday traffic.

Banks, schools and the stock market in Cairo were closed for the third working day, making cash tight. Long lines formed outside bakeries as people tried to replenish their stores of bread, for which prices were spiraling.

An unprecedented shutdown of the Internet was in its fifth day after the last of the service providers abruptly stopped shuttling Internet traffic into and out of the country.

Cairo's international airport remained a scene of chaos as thousands of foreigners sought to flee.

The official death toll from the crisis stood at 97, with thousands injured, but reports from witnesses across the country indicated the actual toll was far higher.

The protesters — and the Obama administration — roundly rejected Mubarak's appointment of a new government Monday afternoon that dropped his highly unpopular interior minister, who heads police forces and has been widely denounced by the protesters. Mubarak was shown making the appointment on state television but made no comment.

Then, hours after the army's evening announcement said it would not use force on the protesters, Vice President Omar Suleiman — appointed by Mubarak only two days earlier in what could be a sucession plan — went on state TV to announce the offer of a dialogue with "political forces" for constitutional and legislative reforms.

Suleiman did not say what the changes would entail or which groups the government would speak with. Opposition forces have long demanded the lifting of restrictions on who is eligible to run for president to allow a real challenge to the ruling party, as well as measures to ensure elections are fair. A presidential election is scheduled for September.

Unity was far from certain among the array of movements involved in the protests, with sometimes conflicting agendas — including students, online activists, grass-roots organizers, old-school opposition politicians and the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, along with everyday citizens drawn by the exhilaration of marching against the government.

The various protesters have little in common beyond the demand that Mubarak go. Perhaps the most significant tensions among them is between young secular activists and the Muslim Brotherhood, which wants to form a state governed by Islamic law but renounced violence in the 1970s unlike other Islamist groups that waged a violent campaign against the government in the 1980s and 1990s. The more secular are deeply suspicious the Brotherhood aims to co-opt what they contend is a spontaneous, popular movement. American officials have suggested they have similar fears.

A second day of talks among opposition groups at the headquarters of the liberal Wafd party fell apart after many of the youth groups boycotted the meeting over charges that some of the traditional political parties have agreed to start a dialogue with Suleiman.

Nasser Abdel-Hamid, who represents pro-democracy advocate Mohamed ElBaradei, said: "We were supposed to hold talks today to finalize formation of a salvation front, but we decided to hold back after they are arranging meetings with Sulieman."

The U.S. State Department said that a retired senior diplomat — former ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner — was now on the ground in Cairo and will meet Egyptian officials to urge them to embrace broad economic and political changes that can pave the way for free and fair elections.

ElBaradei, the former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, invigorated anti-Mubarak feeling with his return to Egypt last year, but the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood remains Egypt's largest opposition movement.

In a nod to the suspicions, Brotherhood figures insist they are not seeking a leadership role.

Still, Brotherhood members appeared to be joining the protest in greater numbers and more openly. During the first few days of protests, the crowd in Tahrir Square was composed of mostly young men in jeans and T-shirts.

Many of the volunteers handing out food and water to protesters were men in long traditional dress with the trademark Brotherhood appearance — a closely cropped haircut and bushy beards.
___
Maggie Michael, Maggie Hyde and Lee Keath contributed to this report.



Read more: FoxNews.com - Hundreds of Thousands Flood Streets of Cairo Calling for Mubarak's Ouster

[StrontiumDog]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2...ypt01_ST_N.htm

Egyptians fill Tahrir Square in massive rally

By Jim Michaels and Theodore May, USA TODAY

Updated 5m ago |

CAIRO — Hundreds of thousands of protesters packed into Tahrir Square on Tuesday in the largest challenge to the embattled regime of President Hosni Mubarak in a week of demonstrations.

• 
• By Peter Macdiarmid, Getty Images
  Protesters gather in Tahrir Square on Tuesday in Cairo. Protests in Egypt continued with the largest gathering yet, with many tens of thousands assembling in central Cairo, demanding the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Al-Jazeera TV estimated the crowd in the square at close to the 1 million organizers had called for. Soldiers ringed the square — Tahrir, or "Liberation" — but let protesters pass after checking them for IDs and weapons.

The demonstration was under tight army security, but both sides avoided confrontations. The army pledged not to use force against demonstrators as long as they are non-violent.

The crowds remained in a positive mood, packed into the square under sunny skies. There was almost a carnival atmosphere as some people painted their faces in the red, white and black national colors. Many fathers hoisted their children on their shoulders.

The protesters insisted that Mubarak step down and rejected his call for his vice president to open talks with other parties.

"If he doesn't leave, the protest will go on until he does," says Wael Abu Halawa, 35, an imam who joined the protesters this morning.

At the center of the protest were two effigies of Mubarak hanging from a traffic signal. One had the Star of David painted on its chest.

Among the older protesters, there was also a sense of amazement after three decades of unquestioned control by Mubarak's security forces over the streets. "We could never say no to Mubarak when we were young, but our young people today proved that they can say no, and I'm here to support them," said Yusra Mahmoud, a 46-year-old school principal who said she had been sleeping in the square alongside other protesters for the past two nights.

Many Egyptians watched from the balconies around the square, tossing dates and bottles of water to the crowds that flowed by chanting, "We're not going. He needs to go!"

Beyond the square and across the region, the situation remained fluid Tuesday.

•The U.S. State Department has ordered non-essential U.S. government personnel and their families to leave the country.

•The exodus of foreigners and Egyptians from Cairo surged as dozens of evacuation planes arrived. About 18,000 passengers swamped the airport in the face of numerous canceled and delayed flights.

•Opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei said President Hosni Mubarak "must leave to avoid bloodshed."

•Egyptian Culture Minister Gaber Asfour said the "revolution" by the country's youth was spontaneous and served as a wake-up call for the government.

•Jordanian Prime Minister Samir Rifai resigned, and King Abdullah asked Marouf Bakhit, a former prime minister, to "launch a genuine political reform process," the Royal Court said in a statement. Hamza Mansour, head of Jordan's Islamic Action Front, said Jordan's largest opposition group wants "an entirely new process, we don't want new names."

•The Western-backed Palestinian government in the West Bank said it will hold council elections "as soon as possible."

Contributing: Associated Press

[StrontiumDog]

Some screen grabs I made from the Al Jazeera live stream...





Mubarak due on with some solution, he is proposing...

[Butterfly]

he will be proposing to stay

[Butterfly]

BBC News - France seizes ex-Tunisia leader Ben Ali's 'family jet'

[harrybarracuda]

My spidey senses tell me that if Hosni is not in Bahrain already he will be by morning. He'll be sharing a compound with that twat Ben Ali soon. One of them will be in Idi Amin's old house. Taif is great little town.

This is quite comical. I can imagine them fighting over whose family gets to use the pool.

Mubarak to say he's departing soon, I'd go 1/2 if I was a betting man.